Of
course, if a woman ain't got looks or sense or any tone to her,
if she's satisfied to live in a bum tenement and marry some dub
that can't make nothing, why, that's different. But you look
like a woman that had been used to something and wanted to get
somewhere. I wouldn't have let _my_ daughter go into no such
low, foolish life."
She had intended to ask about a place to stop for the night.
She now decided that the suggestion that she was homeless might
possibly impair her chances. After some further
conversation--the proprietor repeating what he had already
said, and repeating it in about the same language--she paid the
waiter fifteen cents for the drink and a tip of five cents out
of the change she had in her purse, and departed. It had
clouded over, and a misty, dismal rain was trickling through
the saturated air to add to the messiness of the churn of cold
slush. Susan went on down Second Avenue. On a corner near its
lower end she saw a Raines Law hotel with awnings, indicating
that it was not merely a blind to give a saloon a hotel license
but was actually open for business. She went into the
"family" entrance of the saloon, was alone in a small clean
sitting-room with a sliding window between it and the bar. A
tough but not unpleasant young face appeared at the window. It
was the bartender.
"Evening, cutie," said he. "What'll you have?"
"Some rye whiskey," replied Susan.
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